Caught in the Neoliberal Churn: Pushing Back Against “Productivity” as a Measure of Impact

Abstract

As editors of Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work since December 2020, we have been caught up in the whirlwind of political uprisings, cataclysmic weather events, global pandemic(s), and technological changes in the very act of writing that alter the conditions of academic scholarship at a temporal pace not meant for the bounds of human perception. We have also been subject to the clash between our commitment to political integrity and the capitalist logic of commercial publishing in an era of tectonic shifts in the publishing industry. These worlds intersect with our roles as workers in our respective institutions of higher education —also subject to these same external events and structural changes. Indeed, the neoliberal university has been a reality for decades (Hanesworth, 2017). Occupational precarity, especially for contract employees who increasingly make up the academic workforce; increased expectations for teaching, service, and research; and both flexibility and speed-up in teaching through a new mix of online, in-person, and hybrid teaching options had already been a core part of our experience in the academic world before March 2020. One’s vulnerability to hazardous conditions had already been shaped by race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, first language, and immigration status. Yet this historical moment seems to have intensified dynamics driven into overdrive by a knotty web of white supremacy, neoliberal capitalism, and patriarchy. Heightened vulnerabilities and an eroding capacity to withstand unrelenting changes and acceleration have occupied many pages of journals, including ours (Kim et al., 2021). Critical feminist research showed us how the pandemic disproportionately threatened the lives and well-being of Latinx immigrants (Cross & Gonzalez Benson, 2021), Latina immigrants (Cleaveland & Waslin, 2021), sex workers (Bromfield et al., 2021), intimate partner violence survivors (Heward-Belle et al., 2022), student mothers (LaBrenz et al., 2023), trafficking survivors (Namy et al., 2023), and anti-violence workers (Welch & Schwarz, 2023). Social work scholars like Stephanie Lechuga-Peña (2022) showed us how pandemic conditions disproportionately impacted the “productivity” of pre-tenure BIPOC junior women faculty. And scholars like Ahluwalia-Cameron (2022) and Liegghio and Caragata (2021) showed us how they were adapting to these unprecedented times. These are not siloed experiences. Many of us, including those who are academic scholars, teachers, social work practitioners, students, and service users have faced the squeeze on our life force and have suffered real casualties from these many-sided assaults. Within the social work academy, we have witnessed the ongoing tension between pressure to seek legitimacy through post-positivist, “scientific” epistemologies and methodologies and our ethical commitments to research that questions dominant paradigms and aims to dismantle systems of oppression. We are troubled by determinations for annual reviews, tenure, and promotion driven by a notion of “productivity” aligned with systems of capitalism that value and reward quantity Editorial